Nanotechnology in Cancer Drug Delivery: Innovations and Challenges

While new technologies continue to improve the ability to identify and treat cancers, cancer remains one of the leading causes of illness and death globally, with millions of new cancers diagnosed and millions of people dying each year because of cancer [1]. Although traditional cancer therapies like chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery have resulted in improved outcomes for some patients, their clinical limitations include: (1) the toxicity of these treatments is systemic; (2) traditional treatment does not target the patient’s individual tumor; (3) some cancer cells develop resistance to multiple drugs, and (4) these therapies may not produce sufficient concentrations to be able to kill cancer cells. Therefore, new and more effective cancer therapies that selectively kill only tumor cells while sparing healthy normal cells must be developed [2]. Nanomedicine for cancer treatment and diagnosis, as an application of nanotechnology, provides a new way to integrate multiple facets of cancer management, also referred to as oncology. The use of nano-scale materials, such as those that are between 100 nm and 200 nm, has been developed for the purposes of screening, treating, and monitoring for the presence and progression of cancer [3]. Nano-size materials, i.e., 1–200 nm, have the ability to possess very unique characteristics in terms of their physical and chemical properties, such as large surface area/volume ratios and tunable chemical reactivity, which allow them to readily interact with all biological organisms at the molecular level [4]. Due to these characteristics, nanocarriers can encapsulate the desired therapeutic agent, thereby offering protection of the drug from chemical degradation until it is ready for administration, enhancing its solubility, and improving its pharmacokinetic profile and biodistribution by manipulating the way in which it is released from the nanocarrier [5].